All posts tagged ‘Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars’

An image from Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games (Image: Unreason Press)

There aren’t many comprehensive and in-depth books that chart the vast and complex history of tabletop role-playing and simulation games.

Particularly rare are books that successfully track that circuitous route from wargames to D&D and beyond. Weighing in at a colossal 720 pages, and more than five years in the making, a new book was published in August that takes on just such a Herculean task: Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games.

I’ve read bits and pieces of it, and I have to say it’s an impressive achievement, clearly representing hours and hours of research. Peterson, an avid game collector and computer engineer, has tracked down details and documents, especially the hundreds of archival materials necessary to tell the early history of D&D and other RPGs.

That said, Peterson is the first to admit that Playing at the World is not intended for a general audience. It’s a book for geeks, about geeks.